. ten days in september. we wrap up a blockbuster week in american politics, including some of the most fateful hours of the trump administration. the news keeps coming. a bombshell in the wake of the the white house reportedly buried the record of an explosive conversation where president trump bad meowed the united states to the russians inside the oval office. the house focuses on the president's pressure on ukraine to official means and back channels. the speakers says the impeachment is on a time frame of weeks, no months. this as subpoenas go out to the state department while a diplomat in the middle of the scandal resigns.

"the 11th hour" on a friday night begins now. good evening once again. i'm ali velshi in for brian williams. tonight we come to you from san diego, but all the action is in the nation's capitol where on day 981 of the trump administration, there is yet another bombshell report from "the washington post." it is about what trump told two russian officials, foreign minister sergei lavrov on the left of your screen and sergei kislyak on the right in the now-infamous meeting in the oval office in may of 2017. the day after he fired former fbi director james comey. tonight "the washington post" reports donald trump told the russians that, quote, he was unconcerned about moscow's interference in the u.s. election because the united states did the same in other countries an assertion that prompted alarmed white house officials to limit access to the

remarks to an unusually small number of people. that's according to the three former officials who have knowledge of the matter. but in an interview with lester holt just one day later, he treated russian interference more seriously. >> if russia hacked or did anything having to do with our election, i want to know about it. >> well, it is already intelligence virtually for every intelligence agencies that said that did happen. >> i'll tell you this. if russia or anybody else is trying to interfere with our elections, i think it is a horrible thing and i want to get to the bottom of it. i want to make sure will never ever happen. >> now, you may recall there was no u.s. news media at that may 2017 meeting in the oval office. only russian outlets were involved. "the new york times" reported, trump told the russians, firing the quote "nut job." comey, eased the pressure from

him on the russia investigation. trump's comment about not being concerned about russian interference have not previously been reported. it also reminds us that in the same meeting, trump, quote, revealed highly classified information that exposed a source of intelligence on the islamic state. the piece continues. quote, a memorandum summarizing the meeting was limited to all but a few officials with the highest security clearances in an attempt to keep the president's comments from being disclosed publicly according to the former officials who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, end quote. it is now a main part of the democrats' impeachment inquiry. and the white house has confirmed a related allegations in the whistle-blower complaint that launched that inquiry. a senior administration official tells nbc news that trump's conversation with the ukrainian president was sealed away in a

highly secure code word required computer server maintained by the national security council. earlier on this network, john brennan voiced his concerns about that move. >> if it was moved into that and it was not classified, it clearly is being done for another purpose which was to try to prevent it being discovered or seeing by other individuals so i think that's a very worrisome development. and i think that's also something the intelligence community and the acting dni has to be concerned about, that that was a misuse and abuse of a system designed to protect this country's most precious secrets. >> and within the past hour, the "new york times" reported current and former officials say the white house used a highly classified commuter system accessible to only a select few officials to store transcripts of calls from president vladimir putin and the saudi royal family.

house democrats are moving with all deliberate speed in their impeachment investigation into the president, wielding subpoenas and scheduling hearings as they try to capitalize on the momentum unleashed by the release of the whistle-blower's complaint yesterday. today house democrats issued their first subpoena to a member of trump's cabinet and one of his closest advisers, secretary of state mike pompeo. the chairman of the house intelligence oversight and foreign affairs committee sent a letter to pompeo demanding he produce documents related to trump's dealing with ukraine by october 4th, that's a week from today. the letter instructs him to make five state department officials available for depositions in the coming two weeks. "the new york times" reports and nbc news confirms, that one of those officials, kurt volker, trump's special envoy to ukraine, resigned tonight. the state department has acknowledged volker put trump's personal lawyer, rudy giuliani, in touch with ukrainian officials around the same time

as trump's july phone call with the president of ukraine. the house intelligence committee says the intelligence community's inspector general, michael atkinson will testify in a closed session next friday. he received the whistleblower's complaint back in august deemed credible and of urgent concern and informed congress. the chairs of the house appropriations and budget committees are now requesting all documents related to the white house office of management and budget involvement in holding back hundreds of millions of foreign aid funds for ukraine. all right, our panelists are standing by. but first i'm joined by one of the reporters on this incredible "washington post" report, national security correspondent greg miller, author of the "apprentice" greg, thank you for joining us. i want you to remind us about this conversation of may 2017 between donald trump, sergei

lavrov, the dean of the diplomatic corps, and can kislyak, russian ambassador to the united states meeting with the oval office and now your reporting is that donald trump told them it's not all that concerned about russian interference in the election. what's the context? >> the context is incredible really because it is not only a day that meeting happens, one day after trump fired comey, fbi director. he's meeting in the oval office with two russian officials, u.s. media are excluded. one of those two officials, sergei kislyak, the russian ambassador is already a toxic figure in a trump's presidency. by that point because it is kislyak's conversation with michael flynn in december of 2016 that leads to many ways

of the explosion of the russia story and flynn firing his national secure advisor weeks into the job. so here trump is it inviting the two russian officials into the oval office. as my colleagues and i report tonight, proceeds to tell them that he is not troubled by whatever russia did in 2016 because the united states, he asserts, does the same thing all the time. it's an astonishing thing for a president to say in any context, let alone in the oval office with two russian officials representing the government that just interfered in an historic way in the u.s. election. >> do we know what the reaction was from white house officials or officials who knew about that conversation to the fact that donald trump said that to russian diplomats? >> well, we know this was one of the early conversations and a source of significant dismay to

the professionals who work in the white house. but in this conversation, it was for several reasons, you already articulated a couple of them. in this conversation there are three huge things that happens. one, he reveals highly classified information to his russian guests about counterterrorism operations in syria at that time. he bad mouths james comey and basically says that he got him out of the way to lift his his clout for russia and for the first time tonight we're hearing about the third aspect of that conversation, the third troubling development where he's drawing an equivalence between what the united states does overseas and what russia does. >> craig, thank you for your reporting from "the washington post."

former u.s. attorney barbara mcquade, mieke eoyang, attorney for intelligence and armed services committees. jonts allen, national political reporter, and joining us on the phone, former assistant director of the fbi for counterintelligence, frank figliuzzi. frank, i'm going to start with you because i want to remind our viewers of the proximity of that conversation we're reporting tonight. "the washington post" is saying donald trump told russians that he was not concerned with russian interference in the election and the firing of james comey just before that. and the references that donald trump is alleged to have made to that firing. put this in context for us in terms of the events that set off, really, the mueller investigation. >> well, ali, it is also reported that in the same report that was after the meeting that it was after the president been briefed by the intelligence

community confirming that russia interfered on the president's behalf with the election. so when you put that together with the firing of comey and now his language with the russians, there's very little other way to interpret this, but a green light for the russians and essentially a forgiveness as is reported in this article. three former officials actually interpret this as forgiveness of the russian interference and a green light for possible future interference. you know many of us were wondering and ever since, what was the russians may have on the president. how could they have compromised him? but ali, it's becoming clear tonight that he compromise himself, and what they have on him is his very own conversations with them where he tells them i am okay with this. i'm not concerned about this interference, and he does it knowingly.

and then when you combine that with the secreting of this in ultra secret databases where people who need the readout to do their jobs can't even get access to it, that is the essence of a coverup. >> mica, what's your sense of this new information to the point that frank figliuzzi just made that there's this movement of transcripts and information about donald trump's conversations with world leaders or whomever it might be into the super secret server that you have to have code word access, you have to know the code in order to get access toit it. what's the new relationship between that and the impeachment inquiry that's under way. s. >> what this shows is it is a pattern of covering up and things that are embarrassing and conversations he had with foreign leaders. it's peculiarity that the foreign leaders know what is said, foreign governments can

react but american policy-makers don't know and they can't advise on what america should be doing in response to this. but what it is, it's not so much about the substance of these allegations themselves. it shows that the people around the president understood what he was doing was wrong. they did not want it going out. >> barbara mcquade, from a legal perspective or a parole perspective with the house pursuing this impeachment inquiry, does this become relevant to that inquiry? >> i think it does. you know, this idea of first there's substantive issue and then the procedural issue. the procedural issue is the idea of secreting the documents in a place where only a secretary few can find them. when prosecutors find that kind of behavior, they often think of it as what's known as consciousness of guilt. i don't want people to see this because i know it will reveal something that is very damaging.

i think not just president trump but the people who participated in this have significant legal exposure here. if they are obstructing any investigation or failing to comply with the presidential record. the process here is very troubling. and then with regard to the pattern and the substance, absolutely. we all knew fwoons mueller report all the things that had come before to cause people to question whether president trump was conspiring with russia to interfere with the election, but now to then give green light afterwards as frank said saugts pattern of behavior that even if it is not criminal, does suggest an abuse of power and undermining of the democratic process that i think could arise to the level of an impeachable offense. >> frank, let me ask you something, we didn't know about this from the mueller report. so makes me wonder, how secret is this system? clearly it's all secret from us

because we don't have access to these things. obviously the transcripts would be held on one server and if there's a national security reason for them to have been moved to a more secure server, that's usually the reason for doing it, limiting the number of people that have access to it. do we think robert mueller knew about this? >> that's a great question. i've been asking that question to myself this evening, ali, and i don't know the answer to this. but i know enough that these databases are so incredibly limited and the number of people that would have access to them is so incredibly small that it's possible that mueller actually did not come into contact with with these very same officials who did this. it is possible this didn't surface at all. if it was covered up and mueller asked these questions and people lied, they are facing additional exposure. but i can tell you this. for someone like myself who has classified documents, with the authority to classify documents, this doesn't pass the smell test. these documents are not ultra secret.

they are not top discreet, compartmented information that could cause grave damage to national security. these officials are going to have a hard time explaining how these conversations met that criteria for that database. >> jonathan allen, the only way i know this week is coming to an end because it is actually friday. this has been a week beyond measure and really it has been ten days in case anyone is keeping track since the public first became aware of this whole situation with respect to the president of the united states having a conversation with the president of ukraine. there is a possibility that when we look back at this era, this may be the formative ten days. what's your sense of how the administration has been faring in the midst of all of this revelations and the remarkable speed of which members of congress decided they want to begin impeachment hearings for the president? >> well, first ali, don't jinx us. there's 45 minutes left in this once a week and i'm not sure the world can take anymore news.

the answer is not well as far as how the administration is taking it and republicans on capitol hill are taking it. what you don't see is a broad defense of the president from his own party. you saw republicans in the senate and the house vote releasing the complaint, you were not seeing huge tweets in favor of him from republicans and you saw congressman from nevada in support of the impeachment inquiry allowing the process to go professor ward -- forward today. you saw some tough questioning from the republicans in the inquiry at the intelligence committee the other day. we heard the congressman from texas who's a republican. so from that perspective, i think there's a lot of concern within the republican party. on the democratic side you did see this incredible snowballing, there were some thoughts on monday afternoon. i published a piece that said the impeachment could break as early as thursday. thinking that hearing is going

to be pivotal and monday afternoon the dam was breaking. >> that's right. >> democrats basically were finding out essentially what was to break in the coming days with regard to that white house transcript that was released and eventually the complaint and what they saw there was enough to convince them certainly that an inquiry should go forward and for some of them that impeachable offenses had already occurred. >> jonathan, now that you pointed out there are 43 more minutes left in this week, i think we need to take a quick break for our viewers so anybody can freshen up. anything can happen. this panel is sticking with us. more from tonight's bomb shell report from "the washington post" and a look back at what else donald trump have said in public about russian meddling. later, as i just said, you will not believe just how much news has taken place in the past ten days. we'll take you through this wild week and a half that brought us toward impeachment. "the 11th hour," believe it or not, just getting started on a friday night.

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the explosive new report tonight, three former officials tell "the washington post" that president trump told two senior russian officials in a 2017 oval office meeting that he was you been concerned about moscow's interference in the 2016 presidential election because the united states did the same thing in other countries. the white house has so far declined to comment, but here is how the president treated the matter in public despite what american officials were saying. >> i don't think anybody knows it was russia that broke into the dnc. she's saying russia, russia, it could be russia but also china and it could be lots of other people. it could be somebody sitting in bed at a weighs 400 pounds, okay? >> you don't think the russia is meddling in the election? >> that i don't know. >> my people came to me, dan coats came to me and some

others. they said they think it's russia. i have president putin. he just said it's not russia. i will say this. i don't see any reason why it would be. >> all right, still with us, barbara mcquade, mieke eoyang, and frank figliuzzi. a piece that information that gets lost is the u.s. special envoy, donald trump's special envoy to ukraine has resigned tonight. he is said to be the one who introduced rudy giuliani to the ukrainian officials in the wake of this whole situation. that does not look good or good optics he has stepped down. do we know anything about this? >> i don't know a whole lot about the background here, ali, but i think we are getting to the point that people with a lot at stake are going to have to

tell the truth to the house intelligence committee about what they know about all these activities and what you've seen in terms of the transcript we saw released by the white house earlier this week and what you are seeing in "the washington post" reporting is this incredible parallel of situations where the president has put his own priorities, his own election ahead of what are the stated interests of the united states. that's something that people are going to have to talk about the details of. obviously the envoy of ukraine has a lot of information that's valuable to the inquiry in term of finding out what happened and what didn't happen. i think all of us are going to have to wait to see what that information is, to see just how far that gets taken. but i think it's been a really shocking week in terms of revelations about how far the president will go to win elections, and you know, president george washington if

his farewell address warned about foreign entanglements. that's something talked about on the senate floor every year. all these members of congress are going to have to judge what they hear in evidence from folks like the envoy to ukraine. >> barbara. john talks about the fact that people have to tell the truth. they're going to have to get into detail. from your perspective, when you hear these people from the state department including kurt volker who has resigned tonight. but the other four who've been called to testify, what are you listening for? what is it that congress wants to get all these witnesses from the state department? >> i think they want to know all of the facts and also their perspective. were they enabling or trying to contain the damage? the reporting on kolker that he was trying to contain the damage and he is leaving his position because he didn't think he could serve effectively anymore. that's a really significant development. someone has sort of left

president's team, he would be someone i want to focus on because his resignation signals that he wants to tell the truth and do the right thing and that he believes telling the truth is contrary to his ability to serve in this administration. one thing that i will be looking for in the coming days, are there more resignations. that will be an interesting thing. the president lacks the ability to direct him about who he can talk to or not talk to if he's no longer working for the government or if he's a private citizen. and so i think this is a very significant development, and i think that with depositions of the state department officials, they're going to learn the facts about what exactly rudy giuliani is doing. how it was being conducted, and how those conversations with ukraine were brokered. >> two people appearing were named in the complaint. mica, i don't know what it was, two weeks ago or something we started with hearings, with

corey lewandowski and is house judiciary committee. there were some good questions later in the day, generally speaking conducted by lawyers for the committee, some of the members of congress had some good questioning in there. a lot of people looked at that and said this doesn't make sense to me. i am not sure where it is going. now this looks a little more real. what does the house committee got to do in order to move with some pace and figure out and get to the bottom of this. >> what you see is a different pace of investigation and seriousness of this. these subpoenas that went out today from the three different committees shows the members are interested in hearing from people who are named. they have a focus to this investigation that they didn't have before. i want to mention of kurt kolker, he's not a trump guy. he heads the mccains institute. one of the things significance about him resigning, it makes it much harder for the administration to try to use executive privilege as a gag to

prevent his testimony. he could choose to share information that were he still an employee of the state department, they might stop him from saying by claiming executive privilege like you saw with dni maguire the other day. if kurt volker chooses to tell the committee everything he knows of how he's trying to fix what giuliani was doing, what the president was directing him, his concerns about what the whistle-blower has raised, he can freely say that to the committee without fear of the administration interfering with that. >> frank figliuzzi, i want to talk about this server business this, moving of information in the case of the whistle-blower complaint. the transcript of the call between president trump and the president of ukraine on this code word enabled server far fewer people have. according to reporting from "the new york times" tonight, other things were also moved to that server, generally speaking, conversations between the president and vladimir putin, and here's an interesting line.

calls to the saudis. in the case of the calls with the saudi royal family, the restrictions were set beforehand, and the number of people allowed to listen were sharply restricted. the saudis calls were with bin salman. this is interesting, frank, that these may not have been things sequestered because of their national security vulnerability but because the president just didn't want people to know he was having these conversations or what those conversations were. >> as barb said earlier, this is clearly idence of guilt when you are trying to hide and cover up. a couple of things are worthy, ali. there is always electronic trail. try as you might to cover up, erase, or delete, there's going to be a capability to actually uncover, that you tried to delete on this date, you tried

to make this go away on that date. so the trail is there. my question is how do investigators get to that. we got an attorney general who we know has already told the fbi with regards to the whistle-blower complaint, there's no crime there. so the fbi did not investigate what was referred to them because they were not allowed to. congress needs the kind of investigative tools, forensic and cyber capabilities that the intelligence committee and the fbi had. the other thing that i am actually encouraged by is the speaker of the house wanting the house intel committee to take a lead role in all of this. i am encouraged by all that because evidence is out there. what do i mean by that? i mean that when humans resist subpoenas and corey lewandowski and not answer questions or play games, it would be the intelligence committee, there is electronic incepts there is

other ultra sensitive evidence that'll tell us how the russians or how the saudis reacted to the conversations they had with trump, and that end of the conversation is likely captured, and is house intel committee needs access to that because that evidence will not lie. >> frank, thank you for your analysis tonight. frank figliuzzi, barbara mcquade, mieke eoyang, jonathan allen. we appreciate you helping us kick off the this hour. jonathan there are 29 minutes and we can call it quits for the weekend. >> coming up, we got more on the impeachment. the secretary of state was subpoenaed for documents pertaining to ukraine. "the 11th hour" is back after this. ♪ the amount of student loan debt i have i'm embarrassed to even say i felt like i was going to spend my whole adult life paying this off thanks to sofi, i can see the light

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we're going to do everything we can to proceed methodically but swiftly of we expect the administration is going to do everything they can to shut us down. when they do that and try to do that, every effort to slow us down will only add to the case against them for obstruction of congress. >> democrats are moving full speed ahead with their impeachment inquiry. as we mentioned, house democrats issued the inquiry's first subpoena to secretary of state mike pompeo. the chairs of the house intelligence, oversight, and foreign affairs committees are demanding pompeo's documents related to trump's dealings with

ukraine by october 4th, a week from tonight. they write, quote, your failure or refusal to comply with this subpoena shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the house's impeachment inquiry. back with us tonight, former 11 pace university school of law. and former 11-term republican congressman, christopher shays of connecticut who served on the house oversight committee. welcome to both of you. chris, let me start with you. you were a member of congress. give me your analysis of the pace of what it is happening now in the united states congress. >> first let me say for the record, i have profound unhappiness that republicans have been so silent for two and a half years. they needed to raise the president up to a higher standard and there's no standard. he speaks to the dark side of us. having said that, the president

has given congress no choice but to move forward. nancy pelosi is correct. they have to move forward. the good news is you have three exceptional chairmen in adam schiff and jerry nadler and elijah cummings. i have the deepest respect for adam schiff and how he's proceeded. the good news is nadler is going to have a difficult time with 41 members, getting them to focus. and the five-minute rule is absurd. >> one of the things we saw mimi in the prior testimony in front of nadler's committee with corey lewandowski is it is difficult. not only is a five-minute rule difficult, but a lot of these members of congress, sometimes it gets more political than focused on getting answers. that took hours to get anything of note out of corey

lewandowski. what are you looking for as these hearings move forward? >> ali, i think hopefully they will make use of what they did with the lewandowski here which is excellent council that they have be berry burke and others they need to hire others, berry burke and others if they need to have others. but barry burke in 30 minutes as we know accomplished what hours of other questioning did not. i think it will be different here. first of all, this is what is, frankly, pretty brilliant about subpoenaing pompeo first. you're starting to see people turn on each other. i mean, i had trials like this as a prosecutor, multidefendant trials where all of a sudden when trial started, you know, fingers started pointing at the other defendant -- one another. i think that's going to happen here. pompeo and rudy giuliani already, they can't both be telling the truth and not implicate the other one.

their stories just don't match up. so it's going to be -- >> >> sorry to interrupt you, mimi, but he's said i don't care what mike pompeo thinks. he's got his agenda, his verse of the story, so we're setting up for some sort of disagreement between these two guys who must have been key to what was happening in ukraine because giuliani said pompeo sent him. >> it's going to be giuliani trying to say pompeo gave me approval and pompeo is going to be saying no, no, that's not what i approved for him to do. it is going to get ugly for them quickly and i think frankly it is going to make the job of the people doing the questioning a lot easier. if they stay focused. you're right, they have to stay focused, but it's a narrow subject matter than it was with the mueller investigation which is more sprawling.

>> the ugliness -- go on. i was just going to say the ugliness is the problem. if the american people are going to be watching this, they got to feel good about what is happening and the outcome. when you overthrow the election of the american people, it is huge and never been done. there are going to be people that are so resentful no matter how it's conducted. this is a dangerous time for america and all the members of congress. some democrats are going to lose the election over impeachment >> right so this is interesting. as mimi pointed out, when barry burke, staff counsel, took over the questioning, he did achieve more in a short amount of time than listening to people with the political agenda all day. there may be good reasons to have a political agenda, but if you were still in congress and you were in these hearings, how would you handle yourself? >> i would ask questions and i would make sure that the person following me would follow up on the questions.

i would sit with other members to make sure if the witness didn't respond to the question the previous person asked that you just repeat it. frankly, the chairman should allow republicans or democratic members if their questions are not answered respectfully to just say the gentleman from connecticut has more time, sir, until you show him the respect and answer his question. but it needs to be questions, not statements. >> chris shays, thank you for your time. former congressman from connecticut. mimi rocah as well, thank you both. coming up, ten days in september. we'll show you why. "the 11th hour" is back after this. this raise your steins to the king of speed.

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i am royalty of racing, i am the twisting thundercloud. raise your steins to the king of speed. if you take a look at that call, it was perfect. i didn't do it. there was no quid pro quo. >> when historians look back, these past days may prove pilot. some of the critical moments may have been missed, so we'll look back at how quickly we got to where we are tonight. >> we have a big story in "the washington post" tonight. it involved a whistle-blower complaint from inside the administration, trump interactions with the foreign leader included a promise.

>> i believe that there is an effort to prevent this information getting to congress. >> "the washington post" moments ago saying the whistle-blower's complaint about president trump involves the nation of ukraine. >> did you ask the ukraine to investigate joe biden? >> no, actually. >> so you did ask them to look into joe biden. >> of course i did. >> you just said you didn't. >> it doesn't matter what i discussed. >> one single credible outlet to give him any credibility, not one single one. so i have no comment except the president should start to be president. >> the conversation i had was largely congratulatory, was largely corruption, all of the corruption taking place, it was largely the fact that we don't want our people like vice president biden and his son creating the corruption already in the ukraine. >> we may very well have crossed

the rubicon here. >> i'm announcing the house of representatives moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry. >> she's talking about impeachment. by the way, she hasn't even seen the phone call. >> the trump administration is releasing what the president describes as the transcript of that phone call that launched the democrats' impeachment investigation. >> who those notes reflect is a classic mafia-like shakedown of a foreign leader. >> impeachment for that? >> that word now that we have the whistle-blower complaint. if you read through the appendix, it says this. according to white house officials i spoke with, this was not the first time under this administration a presidential transcript was placed into this code word level system solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive rather than national security sensitive information, not the first time. >> great. >> this is a coverup. this is a coverup. >> i think the whistle-blower did the right thing. i think he followed the law every step of the way. >> i actually think they should

all congratulate me. in fact, i'm a legitimate whistle-blower. >> we expect more subpoenas to go out first thing next week as well. so we're moving with all speed. coming up, "the new york times" did something you don't often see a newspaper do this week. you're going to see it happen again. that's next with the "the 11th hour" continues. 11th hour" continues. i am royalty of racing, raise your steins to the king of speed. [ soft piano music playing ] mm, uh, what do you do for fun? -not this. ♪ -oh, what am i into? mostly progressive's name your price tool. helps people find coverage options based on their budget. flo has it, i want it, it's a whole thing, and she's right there. -yeah, she's my ride. this date's lame. he has pics of you on his phone.

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. today marked the third straight day where "the new york times" had a banner headline to deliver the shocking event that had just taken place a banner goes right across the top of the paper. it's been nothing short of an astonishing past ten days, making what comes next even harder to predict. here with us to make sense of it is jon meacham, author and presidential histetorian. among his books, "impeachment: an american history." i want to ask you about this "washington post" reporting

tonight about the conversation that the president had in may of 2017 with two senior russian officials. the foreign minister of russia and the russian ambassador to the united states. now, in it he says i'm not worried about russian interference allegedly according to the reporting in the election because america does it too. that's an interesting thing to explore. there's truth in the fact that america has done things to influence others' elections. there seem to have been concern among people who heard this that there's an equivalence here that the president doesn't seem to be recognizing that he's undertaking. >> are you suggesting that the president is saying something that may not be nuanced and/or true? that's an unusual assertion at this point in american history. unquestionably he was suggesting an equivalence, and i think there are two significant things out of this "washington post" reporting.

one is, i think this is the first of many. if i were betting, i'd say the event of the last ten days, if anything, will add -- we'll be seeing more and more examples of conversations, of attempts to enlist agents, agency, foreign governments into the political process here. i think that the initial whistle-blower arguably has made it easier for other people to come forward. if past is prologue, i suspect this is part of a pattern for the president, and this is the first example of another instance of the president trying to basically trade our sovereign elections for influence that would help him. though he was talking about 2016 there, i don't think it's much of a leap to say that if he says i don't have a problem with what you did in 2016, presumably then

he wouldn't have a problem with what they would do in 2018 or 2020 or 2022 or 2024. that's part of larger narrative here. i think what republicans have to decide is are they comfortable with a president who is trading american sovereignty, or do they believe someone else should be president who would do that? it's a pretty straightforward question. >> let's talk about this computer system, the revelations that this conversation, the transcripts of the conversation with the ukrainian president as well as now according to "the new york times" transcripts of conversation with vladimir putin, with the saudis, removed this yet more selective system. i don't know if that's akin to alexander butterfield disclosing there was a recording, that nixon has recordings in the white house.

i don't know what it is, but give me some historical context. presidents keeping information from those who might want or need it for political purposes as opposed to national security purposes. is there an analog somewhere? >> presidents have their secrets. we all do. >> right. >> and so i think that -- i wouldn't overreact to the fact that they were trying to keep certain things out of the broader flow, but what we've learned with the whistle-blower and arguably with what the po post is reporting, if one or two folks know about it, there's enough perhaps for people to stand up within the system somehow and say this is not right, thois needs to stop. if it's troubling enough for the white house to take extraordinary steps to conceal it, as you say, it raises an

enormous number of questions about what the content of those calls would be. is it alexander butterfield who revealed in a meeting with fred thompson in a watergate staff meeting that there was a white house taping system? i don't think it's quite that scale because we had no sense at that point that there was a taping system for nixon. >> we did know in this case. >> right. what it does say in this case is that the president of the united states has had a lot of free wheeling and arguably inappropriate conversations, and that people around him recognized that it was inappropriate, so much so that they wanted to move it to a special place. >> jon meacham, i cannot think of a clearer way to end this remarkable week than to have you bring your remarkable perspective to this discussion. thank you, sir, and may you have a quiet weekend. jon meacham, more "the 11th hour" in just a moment. a moment

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here on msnbc. it begins at 4:00 eastern live from central park. that is our broadcast. brian will be back on monday. thank you for being with us and good night from san diego. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. it's a friday, so you know what that means. we have so very much news to get to tonight. it does feel like sort of gigantic pieces of news are coming from a glacier somewhere and splashing into an ocean that's already filled with other gigantic news stories. we're having another one of those nights. if you have been following the impeachment proceedings over these past four days, if you have been following the whistle-blower complaint over the president's dealings with ukraine, the president basically trying to involve ukraine in helping himself get re-elected in 2020, one of the big revelations from this whistle-blower complaint that was unsealed yesterday, oh, my god, was that only yes